What is this game?
This is a multiplayer fighting Mod for Little Big Planet 3, inspired by Mortal Kombat and Super Smash Bros. Creating this was particularly exciting because the game mechanics I desired was completely different from how the original game works, making me really question whether my vision was possible. I had to focus heavily on visual scripting in order to achieve this.
Specifications
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1 year hobby project - 1000 hours of work
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Mod was developed in Little Big Planet 3 Editor
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Runs inside LBP 3 Online, on Playstation 3 and Playstation 4.
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Deathmatch 2-4 players
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2 playable fighting styles
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1 fighting arena
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Reference game 1: Mortal Kombat Trilogy
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Reference game 2: Super Smash Bros. series
Team of myself
Although this was a project made entirely by myself, I want to give a special thanks to Herman Tidblad, my brother and a fellow game designer, who helped with ideas for character abilities, and had a very important role in playtesting.
Background
This was my first game dev related project and is the reason why I ever got enough confidence to pursue a game dev career. I did have lots of experience with the LBP editor before starting this project, however my earlier projects were mostly prototypes that I never took very far. This time I felt my idea was truly something cool and was worth getting dead serious over.
Visual Scripting
The visual Scripting in Little Big Planet may seem limited compared to that of a real game engine, but the more you work with it, the more you realize that these logical building blocks can nearly create anything if you are creative and patient with wiring nodes together. As you can see to the right, it can easily get messy and overwhelming, so keeping scripts organized and modular, was a crucial aspect in developing this mod, and something that later translated very well into Unreal Engine Blueprints.
Aside from the fighting, there are also other things scripted, like destructible objects in the arena, a well play-tested scoring system, and a victory scene when the fight is over. There is even an AI judging how entertaining and competitive the fight has been, which the players will find out at the end of each game
Combo system
The thing that took the most effort was without question designing and scripting the character abilities and their combo system. Looking back on it, I realize it could have been made more intuitive, but at least I included UX helping the players out. Below is the controls for one of the fighting styles.
